Various facilities are operated in a factory, an office, etc. These facilities output job-site data indicating observation results to the facilities, works, or materials, such as error information and status information. The job-site data may be input by a user. The user connects a mobile terminal to the facility, etc, and uses the mobile terminal as a user interface to input job-site data. The job-site data is typically output in a coded manner or as values indicating an observation result. The facility or a computer managing the facility adds attribute data to such job-site data. The attribute data indicates a characteristic and a feature directly possessed by the observation result. Specific examples thereof are information on a place where the observation result was obtained and a date when the observation result was obtained. Information obtained by adding the attribute data to the job-site data is monitored as event information by an administrator. A fixed property administrator is a person responsible for improvement or a person responsible for maintenance and management of the facility in a factory, and is a person or an administrator responsible for various functional divisions, such as an administrator of a server device.
The event information is important since it attributes to the operation management of a factory or an office, the quality control of products, and the business operation of a company, etc. However, the event information directly output by the facility only indicates a code or a simple observed value, and attributes, such as a place where an event occurred and a date when the event occurred, and has no secondary or tertiary meanings. Hence, for many years, the event information is interpreted and evaluated at each hierarchy from a job-site level to a management and business operation level, and the event information is utilized for each level.
Accordingly, there is often a time lag between the job-site level and the management and business operation level to transmit information, and the job-site level and the management and business operation level are isolated from each other from the standpoint of information transmission. Moreover, even if information is received, it is necessary to interpret and evaluate the meaning of such information in combination of other various pieces of information. Therefore, there is also a time lag from the generation of event information to the recognition of the value thereof. Furthermore, the interpretation and evaluation of the meaning of the information is duplicated for individual persons, and a quick response based on the event information is often delayed.
Hence, various information collecting systems are proposed so far. For example, JP 2006-164182 A discloses an information collecting system which generally stores event information once in a database, and information necessary for the interpretation and evaluation of the event information is collected from the database together with the stored event information for each division. Those pieces of information are combined together at each division to interpret the secondary and tertiary meanings of the event information.
According to such an information collecting system, the job-site level and the management and business operation level can obtain the same event information simultaneously. However, as explained above, the event information generated at a facility has no meaning other than an observation result and an attribute. Hence, each person responsible for recognizing the meaning of the event information needs to repeat interpretation of the obtained event information. That is, the event information needs to be interpreted while other information is added thereto, a new interpretation obtained through such interpretation is added to further other information, and this procedure is repeated to give various meanings to the event information step by step.
For example, when job-site data indicating a yield is obtained from a facility, interpretation must be repeated step by step without a delay, such as, whether or not the yield indicates the abnormality of the facility; if it indicates the abnormality, whether the abnormality is caused by a consumable part or not; if it is caused by the consumable part, where the consumable part is stocked; if the consumable part is taken out from the stock, whether or not restocking is necessary; and if the restocking is necessary, from which company the consumable part is purchased, while other information like a communication to an important customer of the delay of delivery is added to the event information.
Accordingly, the information collecting system can deliver the event information to individual divisions without a time lag, but the necessary time for interpreting the event information varies depending on the divisions. Hence, a time lag is unavoidable for the recognition of the event information between the job-site level and the management and business operation level, resulting in a still-unsolved isolation between the job-site level and the management and business operation level from the standpoint of recognition of information.
The present invention has been made to address the above-explained problem of the related art. An object of the present invention is to provide an information collecting system that enables instantaneous understanding to the secondary and tertiary meanings of event information generated at a job site.